James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[181] Wolsey; as the elephant, with a tap of his trunk, knocks the breath out of the little tyrant whom he had been long accustomed implicitly to obey,—so do the People, in some quite unexpected moment, blow away, with one breath, the elaborate and deep-laid schemes of the republican wire-puller; and him They have done it, O wire-puller! and will do it again.

Who can have forgotten that campaign of 1840? The “mass meetings,” the log-cabin raisings, the “hard cider” drinking, the song singing, the Tippecanoe clubs, the caricatures, the epigrams, the jokes, the universal excitement! General Harrison was sung into the presidential chair. Van Buren was laughed out of it. Every town had its log-cabin, its club, and its chorus. Tippecanoe songbooks were sold by the hundred thousand. There were Tippecanoe medals, Tippecanoe badges, Tippecanoe flags, Tippecanoe handkerchiefs, Tippecanoe almanacs, and Tippecanoe shaving-soap. All other interests were swallowed up in the one interest of the election. All noises were drowned in the cry of Tippecanoe and Tyler too.

The man who contributed most to keep alive and increase the popular enthusiasm, the man who did most to feed that enthusiasm with the substantial fuel of fact and argument, was, beyond all question, Horace Greeley.

On the second of May, the first number of the Log-Cabin appeared, by “H. Greeley & Co.,” a weekly paper, to be published simultaneonsly at New York and Albany, at fifty cents for the campaign of six months. It was a small paper, about half the size of the present Tribune; but it was conducted with wonderful spirit, and made an unprecedented hit. Of the first number, an edition of twenty thousand was printed, which Mr. Greeley's friends thought a far greater number than would be sold; but the edition vanished from the counter in a day. Eight thousand more were stuck off; they were sold in a morning. Four thousand more were printed, and still the demand seemed unabated. A further supply of six thousand was printed, and the types were then distributed. In a few days, however, the demand became so urgent, that the number was re-set, and an edition of ten thousand struck off. Altogether, forty-eight thousand of the first number were sold. Subscribers came pouring in at the rate of seven hundred a day. The list lengthened in a few